Why We Write

The Prompt: This week's writing prompt is a little bit different than usual. Instead of telling us a fictional tale, we'd like to hear the why behind your love of writing. Share in the comments—in under 500 words—the reason behind your love of writing. Your response could appear in the February 2018 issue of Writer's Digest!

The Prompt: This week's writing prompt is a bit different than usual. Instead of telling us a fictional tale, we'd like to read about the why behind your wondrous words. Describe in the comments—in under 500 words (and in this case, brevity is best)—the reason why you love writing.

You can also share with us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, but be sure include the hashtag #WhyWeWrite. Your response could appear in the February 2018 issue of Writer's Digest.

And for those of you who prefer more traditional prompts, never fear: We'll be back next week with a thought-provoking query in our usual vein.

Need some inspiration? These famous authors have offered reasons why they write:

Gustave Flaubert“Writing is a dog’s life, but the only life worth living.”

Joan Didion“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. …What is going on in these pictures in my mind?”

Don Delillo“I write to find out how much I know. The act of writing for me is a concentrated form of thought. If I don’t enter that particular level of concentration, the chances are that certain ideas never reach any level of fruition.”

Lord Byron“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.”

Gloria Steinem“Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald“You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.”

Jennifer Egan"When I'm writing, especially if it's going well, I'm living in two different dimensions: This life I'm living now, which I enjoy very much, and this completely other world I'm inhabiting that no one else knows about.”

Michael Lewis"There's no hole inside of me to fill or anything like that, but once I started doing it, I couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything else for a living. I noticed very quickly that writing was the only way for me to lose track of the time.''

George Orwell“Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood.”